Enveloped between the opening and closing tracks “Sin,” and “Love,” as if the two words were synonymous, 070 Shake’s third LP, Petrichor forces you to submit to the rumbling ride across genres as she explores the pleasures and frustrations that come with falling in love. From the auto-tuned mumbles that she is known for on songs like “Lungs,” to classic rock guitar shreds of “Battlefields,” the record seems to defy any specific time or place; it is an otherworldly, cinematic odyssey.
It has a gothic feel from start to finish with its dark atmospheres, such as the whirling, stormy outro to “Sin.” The twisted orchestral soundscape of “Vagabond” is paired with eerily stacked vocals creating an almost tribal-like chant as she sings about the complicated vulnerability of letting someone know you deeply. The piano ballad, “Into Your Garden” featuring JT is about possessive love, singing “cut that bitch off,” referring to an ex, and the intensity continues on later during the track “Blood On Your Hands,” a song about wanting to die by your lover’s hands.
A stand-out song to me is the cover of Tim Buckley’s “Song to the Siren” featuring Courtney Love. Where This Mortal Coil’s rendition of this song had an ineffable, whimsical allure, Shake’s version is thunderous and intense and leans more into the dark tragedy of a doomed romance, as if drowning at high sea as opposed to floating upon a peaceful, “shipless ocean”.
I was oddly moved by “Winter Baby / New Jersey Blues,” a weird, palette-cleansing mix of The Ronettes and The Beach Boys. It seems like it would be out of place, a sunny intermission to the brooding tone of the rest of the album, yet it does maintain a sort of desperate yearning when listened to in context. There is almost nothing light about this album, it is intense in every sense of the word, whether it’s the gut-punching drums, witchy pads, or brutally real lyrics. But, as with Modus Vivendi and You Can’t Kill Me, Petrichor is such a powerful album that leaves me feeling haunted but also extremely cool. It holds a specific kind of hardness that you can only get from an 070 Shake album and I will certainly be returning to this record to re-up on badass energy throughout the grey winter months.
